‘89’s 1st Big Storm Turns Northeast Into an Icebox

Howling winds and plummeting temperatures--a backhanded swipe from the first major storm of 1989--turned the Northeast into a giant icebox today from Caribou, Me., to New York City.

Winds gusted to 110 m.p.h. on top of New Hampshire’s Mt. Washington this morning and combined with temperatures of 17 degrees below zero to produce a wind chill of minus 85 degrees.

“That’s cold enough to make you put your earmuffs on,” Mt. Washington Observatory spokesman Peter Crane said. He said winds at the summit averaged 89 m.p.h.

An ice climber who got lost Tuesday on the 6,288-foot mountain, the highest in the Northeast, was rescued today, though the cold did some damage to his feet.

Hundreds of homeless people crowded into New York’s shelters as temperatures on city streets hovered in the upper teens and winds gusted to 35 m.p.h., producing a wind chill of 20 below.

Forecasters said it would get worse as the day wore on--with winds strengthening to 50 m.p.h. and temperatures falling toward single digits.

In Maine, brisk winds dropped the wind chill to between 45 and 55 degrees below zero this afternoon at Caribou, the National Weather Service said.

Forecasters said the wind and cold were part of the first major storm of 1989, which dumped up to 8 inches of snow on parts of Ohio and Pennsylvania by this morning, but skipped across the East Coast without delivering on its promise of heavy snows in large population centers.

Weather service spokesman Lyle Alexander said that storm was well off in the Atlantic early today, but he said it intensified once it hit the water and pulled arctic air and strong winds into the East from Canada.

The storm deposited 8 inches of snow by this morning on the Cleveland suburbs of Bedford and Garfield Heights, Ohio, and in the mountains of central Pennsylvania.

But forecasts of up to 6 inches of snow from New York to Washington, D.C., never materialized. Suburbs of the nation’s capital received 2 inches of snow and New York was left without a trace.

At Mt. Washington, N.H., Jim Church of Pleasantville, N.Y., was found shortly after 10 a.m. today by rescue crews as he began his descent from the mountain.

“He’s essentially OK, but he does have some cold injury to his feet,” Mike Torrey of the Appalachian Mountain Club said. “The fact that he survived at all is to his credit.”

Church hiked up Mt. Washington on Monday with Mark Fedow, 34, of New York City. They decided to leave the summit after a “whiteout”--an intense blizzard--obscured visibility.

The two spent Monday night below the summit and began to hike down Tuesday but became separated, Torrey said. Fedow made his way to the base to find help, but Church became lost.

“The conditions on the summit are brutal,” said Maj. Henry Mock of the state Fish and Game Department. “But he’s in good condition.”